Chapter 17: A Malicious Pair of Eyes

A bunch of us got together over at Josh's house on Sunday afternoon. Austin, Tessa, Josh, Andrea, Jake, and I were in the basement. The television was on, tuned to a football game, but nobody, not even Jake, was paying any attention to it.

"So," said Austin, "what did you girls find out?"

"Molly's scared practically out of her mind," said Tessa. "I was able to talk to her for a few minutes yesterday, right after the football game."

Andrea added, "From what I could find out, the Bulls have been recruiting, both boys and girls, and Jilly's making them stronger than they ever were when Richie was running things. They might not be quite as visible, but they're a lot sneakier than they used to be."

"It's kind of odd, isn't it, that Jilly was able to take over the gang?" asked Jake. "After all, isn't he the youngest?"

"He's not the youngest by much," replied Andrea. "He's carried on the Del Toro family tradition of flunking a couple of grades. Even though he's only in the ninth grade, he's sixteen years old."

"And," added Tessa, "even though Harold, for instance, is a senior, the first thing Jilly did when he got to high school and joined up with his big brother's friends was to jump on Harold and beat the crap out of him, for no real reason other than he wanted to. He kind of asserted his dominance early by pounding on the oldest guy. He not only backed up his swagger, he also showed them that he might be just a little crazy. It impressed them, and they all got in line after that."

"A little crazy," I observed, "and also a little smart."

"Only within their circle," noted Andrea. "Basically, he's dumb as a rock, kind of like his big brother Richie. But among the Bulls, he's a rocket scientist. But, believe it, he's got mean covered," she added. "Whatever we decide to do concerning Molly, we're going to have to go through Jilly first."

"That's not such a comforting thought," said Josh, "but I'll do what I need to do to get my sister out of there."

"Josh," I said, "I know your parents have got to be concerned about this. Have you talked to them about Molly?"

"They want to call the police," said Josh. "I keep on telling them that the solution doesn't lie with the cops in this case." He sighed. "They know we're trying to do something here, and they've talked to Heather at school quite a bit about Molly, and Heather told them to let us give it a try first before they do anything further. She said that she thought Molly would be more receptive to us than she would to any authority figure, whether it's the cops, or a counselor at school, or even Mom and Dad. So they're going to let us do what we can. Reluctantly, but at least they're willing to give us a chance."

"Well, we can always fall back on brute authority figures if we fail," said Austin. For Molly's sake, I hoped it didn't come to that.

For all our good intentions, we didn't come up with a feasible plan that afternoon. We ended up ordering pizza, cracking open a bunch of sodas, and goofing off.

The next morning at school, just before the first bell rang, I saw Josh at his locker. He looked like he had been up most of the night.

"Molly came home last night," he said quietly. "Her face was puffy, and she had a black eye. My parents were really upset, and they called the cops. They came over to interview her, but she wouldn't say anything to them, or to Mom or Dad. Refused to press charges, refused to even say what had happened. When she heard the cops at the front door, she ran upstairs and locked herself in her room, so they couldn't even see her."

"Yeah? Then what?" I knew there was more to the story.

"The cops finally left around midnight. They said they would have a talk with Del Toro and his parents. Jilly's almost as well known to them as Richie, apparently. Anyway, they told my folks that there really wasn't much they could do without cooperation from Molly, even though she's a minor." He looked around to see who else might be hearing our conversation before he continued. "They said that, under most circumstances, they could scare the suspect into stopping whatever they were doing wrong. In this case, they were pretty sure that wasn't going to work, but they promised to do what they could."

Josh slammed his locker door closed in frustration. "When I walked by her room, after the cops left, I could hear her crying in there, behind the closed door. I knocked, but she ignored me. I couldn't go barging in, you know?" He looked at me, wanting confirmation that he had done the right thing. Not sure if he had or not, I still nodded encouragingly. "Maybe an hour later, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed, I was still up. Couldn't sleep, you know? So I was reading, or at least trying to. What I was really doing was worrying about my sister." He took a deep breath. "Anyway, Molly came into my room, Sean. She was still crying a little, and she was limping pretty badly, kind of shuffling along."

"Yeah?" I wanted to offer encouragement for him to go on with his story, because he needed to tell someone, even though I really didn't want to be the one to hear it.

"And she started taking off her clothes. She was wearing, like, a dirty t-shirt, and a scruffy pair of jeans, and she took off her t- shirt, and then sat on the edge of my bed and took off her jeans." Josh's voice was catching. If we had been alone, I knew he would have been close to tears, telling me about this. "She just sat there, without saying a word to me, Sean, in her underwear. And her whole body was marked up. Bruises, some of them looking kind of old, but definitely some fresh ones, too, all up and down her ribcage. There were scrapes on her shoulders and back, and hickeys and bite marks on her legs, her... her thighs, you know, up near... there." Now he was so uncomfortable he wouldn't even look at me. I put my hand on his bicep, hoping the contact would give him a little comfort. "She pulled the top of her... her bra down, just a little, and her... her boobs... at least the tops of them... had a bunch of hickeys on them, too..."

The bell rang, startling us both. He drew himself up to his full height, and took another deep, cleansing breath. We started walking down the hall to our first classes.

"So I helped her get cleaned up as best as I could, and put some antiseptic on her cuts, and put her back to bed. I told her to just stay in bed today, and I would get some help for her by this afternoon. She never said a word the whole time, Sean, but I could see it in her eyes, that she wanted me to help her. She was sleeping when I left this morning. Dad went to work, but Mom called in so she could stay home with Molly, in case she wanted to talk. I don't think she will, though."